


Tethered

by Xenobotanist



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Rope Bondage, Rough Sex, Violent Thoughts, dark impulses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28376877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xenobotanist/pseuds/Xenobotanist
Summary: In the dark, pain and pleasure all sound the same to the giver, and Garak was skilled at eliciting both.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 17
Kudos: 65





	Tethered

**Author's Note:**

> This has been haunting me for a while but I didn't want to put it out during the holiday. Not fluff, although it does have a happy ending.

Garak was gentle with Julian.

He kissed him soft like down feathers drifting on the breeze.

He caressed him like waves in a pool, liquid undulations that made his body rise and fall in a weightless and rhythmic pulse.

He entered him with the utmost care, slow and steady and constantly checking for comfort, centimeter by excruciating centimeter, until the human was begging for more, for harder, for anything beyond this delicate, distant, almost absent presence.

He brought him over the edge again and again with breathless gasps, high-pitched squeals that were wrung out of his impossibly tightly clenched body, eyes rolled back and spine arched and toes curled until he collapsed in a boneless heap like he’d never be able to rise again.

He held back from bites, from squeezes or scratches, from anything but the faintest whisper of pressure, driving them both insane with arousal and wanting. 

They both came every time, often at the same time, but only one of them was ever left feeling drained and sated.

Because Garak wanted to hurt Julian. He wanted to see spasms and twitches and hear whimpering screams. He wanted to rake his nails down the pristine skin of that caramel-coated chest, to see viscous stripes of red drizzle down like syrup along his belly. To bind wrists and ankles so tightly that circulation was cut off, swelling the extremities to purple and blue, veins bulging in a futile attempt to send or receive blood through their corridors. To sink his incisors into those sharp, angular shoulders until tooth met bone.

He wanted to fuck that pretty mouth until his lover gagged and choked, until tears streamed down his face and he gasped for strangled breaths through the inadequate passages of his nose.

In the dark, pain and pleasure all sound the same to the giver, and Garak was skilled at eliciting both.

These desires, wicked and perverse, cropped up in his daydreams during perfunctory morning subspace business negotiations, haunted him through lunches and shopkeeping during the day, and danced before his eyes at night. They taunted him, distracted him, flitted in the corners of his vision often enough to not only question his sanity but doubt it altogether.

He stitched and hemmed by tool, but embroidery was done by hand, and he couldn’t help but picture flesh instead of fabric under his hands, the needle dipping in and out in fantastic patterns, a tattoo of beauty and possession. A mark that undeniably claimed the piece as  _ his _ and his alone.

It wasn’t that Garak didn’t care about his companion; if that were the case, he would have let slip his inclinations long before. It wasn’t that he held any repressed anger at Julian or disgust with the Federation that made him long to lash out. It wasn’t even the weight of years upon years in exile in an environment hostile to both his body and spirit that cracked his carefully maintained veneer.

It was simply that his mind was unable to distinguish one form of thrill from another. After the training in the Order, after the physical reconfigurement of his brain with the implant, no amount of neural reconnection or cognitive behavioral therapy was ever capable of stamping out every last sadistic impulse. He lived with the constant temptation--and threat--of committing violence.

He wanted to injure. He wanted to maim. He wanted to kill. He wanted to watch the life drain out of his adversary’s eyes as confusion and anger warred and then faded away into nothingness. To feel the heartbeat slow and still under his fingertips as blood seeped out of a dozen shallow cuts or lungs were denied their fill of fresh breaths.

And Garak knew, he  _ knew _ , that if he should ever let his passions reign, if he should ever truly let go, he could and likely would do irreparable harm to the young doctor’s body, possibly his sanity, and most definitely their long-standing friendship.

It was the most devastating form of torture Garak had ever endured, and perhaps this is what Tain had actually wanted for him. Why he’d adored the brash Starfleet officer who disturbed his retirement, and allowed him to leave with the means to Garak’s salvation, given him the avenue to build something between them while nursing him back to health. To tempt him with sweet and succulent flesh that would bring out his worst nature, his strongest and most violent urges.

Some days, it was almost enough to make him contemplate oblivion. 

But Garak was a fighter, and he’d never been very good at giving up.

Julian knew that something was wrong. He was too sensitive a soul not to spot Garak’s hesitance, his occasional reluctance, the way he turned away after orgasm to hide the fury and despair on his face. He was understanding, solicitous, and always offered to lend an ear, but never pushed too hard or pried too deeply. 

The young doctor had suggested once, timidly and almost off-handedly, his willingness to try new things in the bedroom. Something rougher, or more dominating, or just a tiny bit more  _ more _ . Garak had demurred, citing any number of excuses from contentment with their current arrangement to loss of flexibility in his old age to plain and simple prudishness. But the truth lay firmly hidden, locked away and stowed in a dark and twisted place.

The first time that Garak came to his bedroom and saw the ropes, coiled red silk tossed carelessly on the bed, he froze in his tracks. They were the color of humanoid blood and looked just as silky as their owner’s heretofore unblemished skin. They made his fingers ache and his heart race.

He’d sat there shaking while Julian murmured to him so innocently, words like “restraint” and “safe words” falling from his lips like raindrops made of knives. 

But when the Human lifted them from the blankets in offering and Garak shook his head, he set them aside without visible disappointment or further comment.

It wasn’t until they were naked and writhing together under the covers, Julian on top to spare his slight frame from Garak’s solid Cardassian weight, that he reached for them again. 

And he proposed not that Garak tie him up and use him, but that  _ he _ do the leashing and dominating. He said it quietly, self-consciously, admitted it was something he had never done before.

Garak acquiesced more out of amusement than anything else, curiously surprised that the benign young doctor thought he could actually subdue a hardened and fantastically successful operative.

Julian wound and knotted the cords diligently and precisely, an intent look of concentration across his face as he mouthed instructions or reminders to himself with each tuck and twist. The ropes weren’t of any material Garak was familiar with, thicker and more elastic than silk, with a weave that was almost adhesive when it came in contact with itself. They were tight but not dangerously so, and warmed against his skin.

The part that finally made the ex-operative really take notice was that all of the knots were tied around his wrists. Below his palms, they were out of reach of his fingertips, which meant that no amount of stretching or prying would work them apart, much less release him from their grasp. When Julian sat back to admire his handiwork and Garak tested and tugged, he found that he was well and truly tethered. 

Julian implored him for a safe word, insisted it was mandatory, and he finally relented, asking for one to be appointed him. ‘Seashell’ was suggested, something that was unlikely to come up in any of their daily conversations, much less in a Starfleet-issued, barely hospitable bed on a space station.

The loss of autonomy was awkward at first, Garak repeatedly making an effort to use his hands, and Julian forgetting that he was leading the dance. But they worked through it bit by bit, the Cardassian learning to lie back and accept pleasure while the Human found new ways to give it.

Nails were introduced, gently and then roughly scraped over scales and hide, and despite their brittle nature, Garak felt like lances of fire opened up along his torso. Teeth came too, nibbling crests, ridges, and scutes, then moving onto more tender places like the biceps and inner thighs. The nips and tweaks were too kind at first to be deeply felt, but over time they grew sharper and bolder, and Garak came to anticipate and yearn for each new spike and twinge.

Julian experimented with his mouth between his lover’s legs, trying new wild and wonderful techniques that made Garak want to claw at his throat or yank at his hair, but his fingers only grasped impotently in the air over his head, nothing to sink into but the pads of his own palms.

By the time the Human stared him straight in the eyes and coyly expressed interest at being the one to perform penetration instead of being penetrated, Garak only nodded numbly and wiggled his hips with the impulse to do  _ something _ with his body, regardless of what it actually was.

Preparations were made, extra lubricants applied, and all Garak could do was watch as that lithesome body was lowered over his, that thick and bulbous organ extended to his entrance, and spread his legs wantonly as it buried itself inside.

Things grew fuzzy and harried after that, thrusting and wrenching and pulling and pulling but not coming loose, and Garak could feel his internal fetters ripping to shreds, but he was unable to stop the rising tide of passion, of ferocity and savagery that strove to break free. And when it did, he couldn’t rend flesh or crush bone or even smother breath. Could do nothing but lift his hips off the bed and roar out in climax, heat forced from his lungs in such a rush that it left his chest and throat feeling raw.

Ears ringing, wrists burning, and shoulders straining, he fell limply back into the mattress under the slack body covering his.

Blackness slowly leached from his vision until he could see again, and loving but concerned eyes peered down at him.

Garak felt immensely vacant, scooped out, hollowed... but also unwound, released, and  _ hallowed. _

It was an alien feeling, one he hadn’t ever experienced even after the deepest, most violating interrogations, nor after marathon sessions of sexual gratification under the influence of the wire. 

It felt, strangely, the way he might expect to feel if he were to ever set foot on Cardassia again.

Stripped of every last hope and dream, naked and vulnerable and destitute, only to feel the red sun on his face and sand between his toes welcoming him back as if he’d never left.

It was the first time of many that they brought the ropes into the bed with them, freeing by restraining, winning by losing, ending by beginning. 

And years later, a dozen pairs later, when he finally did return home with Julian by his side, that first time they came together in the shed behind Tain’s fallen mansion, he realized that the ropes had never been packed, that somewhere along the way his companion had come to trust him enough to purposely leave them behind. And he discovered that it didn’t matter in the least.


End file.
